


A Thousand Ways To Go Home

by a tattered rose (atr)



Category: Being Erica
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29411070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atr/pseuds/a%20tattered%20rose
Summary: I lost my hat while gazing at the moon, and then I lost my mind.- RumiThis is Erica and Tom's last journey.
Relationships: Erica Strange/Dr. Tom
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	A Thousand Ways To Go Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moon_Blitz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moon_Blitz/gifts).



> All quotes (and title) are by Rumi

_My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there._

~*

And it began. A singularity. An oddity . A dot on a chalkboard that entirely fails to describe yet manages to represent the whole to its parts.

A mote on a flake of a speck in a sigh gave the dusty dream of its sum a name. A snide name. A silly name. A fine name: The Big Bang. Not a very pretty name, to be sure, but too much beauty often obscures the beauty of the truth.

It began. And it was. And it created space to explore and time to remember and love to find its way back when it would grow tired and lonely and wanted to go home. One day, it would.

One soul, shredding itself again and again in search of everything it could be. Never knowing what or how or why and never caring until a few fragments found themselves small enough to be content. And they built little cabins all in a clump, with fires in the hearths and cocoa in the cupboards. And in this little corner space beckoned and time lured and very carefully, one more time, they each tore themselves in two so the love could lead them back.

They gave themselves a much more poetic name for what they had become: soul mates.

~*

_Love is the bridge between you and everything._

~*

Erica and Tom clung to each other for the first time, for the last time, for the time it took their hearts to share a beat. The flicker of firelight waved from the windows of their cabin, smoke trailing merrily from the chimney; though of course they were Humans in their World and didn't know any of that. But their souls stood, hand in hand looking longingly at their door, even knowing there was more to do and see and be and they'd be home soon enough.

And that knowledge would echo until they were. In the skip of a heartbeat as it missed the comfort of its mate. A dream so real they wouldn't realize it was. The call of their name, a familiar voice, though no mouth to have spoken.

Erica and Tom clung to each other in his office. A shelter, of sorts, for the past and the present, the future always just outside the door. A place where time took a break and let the broken take a breath. A symbolic covenant they'd made their own.

Rules and conventions dusted the rug and they stood in the sure and certain knowledge that no one, and nothing, could tear them apart but by their own, mutual, choice. They had laughed, cried, fought, guided, pushed, betrayed, repented, loved. _You too?_ The question wrapped around them tightening their arms and stroking their hair as their heads pressed together. _Me too._ The answer slipped down with their tears to remind them that they were more than skin, more than mind, even more than heart: they were everything at once.

Erica and Tom clung to each other because that was the only way they could let each other go. Never from their minds or their hearts. They were a part of each other. But from their futures. Humans so often live in the past or in the future. So rarely in the present. But they did their best, ingraining the seconds as a painfully perfect memory.

Those moments could be the story. Clearly not the full story, that would take many years to tell, and can only be truly known by being lived. Nor much of a narrative, which could be crafted in hours. But insomuch as one picture can hold a thousand words, and one word draw a picture, the span of a hug is an apt enough summary.

So that _could_ be it, and be enough to get the idea. But the soul that split itself in two each time it walked out its door had gotten bored with going about things in the usual way. Bored enough to join a new game. And then, bored enough to break the rules and conventions of a game that had a name, straightforward enough but fun to say: it was called Therapy.

~*

_The way my Beloved can fit in my heart, two thousands lives could fit in this body of mine. One kernel could contain a thousand bushels, and a hundred worlds pass through the eye of the needle._

~*

Erica dove behind the hedge, suddenly gasping for air. She knew it was the right decision, if inelegant execution. Like she knew she could walk behind the tree a few feet away, disappearing from view to end up... anywhere she chose. Liminal spaces, that's what it took, doorways or crossroads, the human eye or the splice of intention.

It was Sarah she had come to see. And it was Tom she had fled from. Tom's voice that she heard, his face she searched for between the leaves.

The tree was mere steps away, but she couldn't make herself move.

“Erica.” A hand landed on her arm.

“Dr. Naadiah. I know, I know we can't see each other,” her voice was choking, eyes filled. “But he's right there, don't make me leave, not yet, just let me...” she clamped a hand to her mouth.

“Erica, you're Sarah's Doctor, you were bound to cross paths, and you can't-”

“-See him, I know, but he's right there, and I want-”

They were all right there. Four generations of Therapy, woven together by a precious gift, forever divided by Tom's exit. It was surreal, or would be later, when she could reflect with composure.

“I know. Believe it or not, I'm not here to drag you away from a mistake you're about to make.”

Erica finally looked back, questioning the troubled gaze.

“It's Tom. He suspects Dr. Arthur accepted Sarah into Therapy, and he's going to say something, trying to find out, something he can't say.”

Tom had turned, slightly, his face now visible. He looked happy. Hopeful. A wife, a daughter, a life.

“Then how do we stop him? Maybe it's good, he'll know, and Sarah will know she's not alone, they won't have to lie to each other. It's a huge secret they don't have to have between them.”

“We can't stop Tom from finding out about Sarah.” A new voice cut into the conversation, as Tom and Sarah both froze.

“Arthur.” Naadiah's voice barely betrayed her surprise.

And then there were five.

Arthur shook his head. “I had hoped he could take Sarah on faith. But Tom was never good at letting things be, when he really cares.”

“So why not let them talk?” Erica tried to argue. “I mean, you've said it yourself, this is an abnormal situation.”

“Do you really think it's in Sarah's best interest, to know her father's been through a process she's only still beginning?”

Though wish and reality warred upon Erica's tongue, her professional opinion won out. “No. Not now. She'd only see it as a betrayal. By him. And by me.”

“Yes. And that's what you need to protect her from.” Their relationship was now more like equals, and Naadiah's cool demeanor still sometimes rankled, but Erica listened harder, if only in respect for Tom.

“But how? Do I text her, tell her to come and meet me?”

As serene as Naadiah could be, Arthur embodied calm. “It's not Sarah we need to influence.”

“Arthur, rules are rules, we can't-”

“No. We can't. But Erica-”

“You want me to talk to him?”

“No, but I need to show you something.”

“Okay, what-” The world spun and jerked, and Erica slipped to the ground.

The pavement was very soft, and when she opened her eyes the sky was flat and blank and so very close.

“Where am I?”

The room was foreign, and as she sat up her arm hit against bare flesh.

She looked over and squeaked, slapping a hand to her mouth lest she wake the man. Then she fled, finding shoes in the corner and a dressing gown that looked her size and an unfamiliar street outside the front door. It was morning, early, earthy smells and voices calling from fields and clouds of dust still settling from the disturbance of the horse and carriage just disappearing around a wend.

“Where am I?” she whispered, “When?” It was clearly the past, but not hers. Not Tom's. This was sometime long before.

And yet, it had been Tom sleeping next to her in the bed.

A man was whistling, slightly out of tune but it sounded like... The Beatles? She followed the sound to a barn, where Arthur was brushing down a horse, who neighed gently at her.

“Dr. Arthur?” Erica all but ran to him. “Arthur, please tell me that's you. Who am I? Who was that?”

He smiled, gently. “You are you, and that is Tom.”

“No, I'm not. He's not. We can't be. Because based on these clothes, this is not – it's not even the right century- I don't understand. What am I doing here?”

“Erica, even I don't understand. Not completely. I don't believe any of us ever could. But this life, it's as real as the one you've been living in 2011.”

Brain flailing, Erica huffed. “Do you mean- is this like reincarnation? Is that what happened before?”

“Perhaps. Or what we call reincarnation, at least.”

“Okay. So. Dr. Tom- Tom, and I,” sometimes she still had trouble dropping the title from her thoughts, and when she'd try it would be like losing him all over again. “What, we're together in another life? That's what you wanted me to know?”

“Not just in this life.”

She shook her head as if trying to put the world back to rights. “But I'm with Adam. I love him. Dr. Tom and I-”

“You are married in this life. In others you are brother and sister, soldiers in war, father and son, strangers who have one conversation in a park.”

Taking a deep breath and looking skywards, she tried to piece together this new layer of what the universe could be. “Where's my family? Where's Adam? Is my brother here?”

“Some are here. Some aren't, this time around. But yes, many will cross your path each time.”

“So Cat's Cradle is real? This is- it's too much.” She was rebelling, she could feel it rising but “I don't understand what you're trying to say, or what you want me to do. How does this help me, help Sarah?”

Arthur, not reassuringly, looked troubled. “You can help Sarah by helping Tom. This Therapy, this gift, we're out of phase with the world.”

“And that's how we travel through time.”

“And space. We have one foot in and one foot out. Now that Tom has left, he-”

“Is just in the normal world.”

“Mmm.” He confirmed.

“So, what. You can't show him this so you want me to... tell him? So he'll know whatever happens, it's okay?”

Troubled had become grave. “I want you to tell him it's okay to forget. About Therapy. He'll still be the man he has become-”

“-But he won't- Oh god. Why did you let us think he could remember me- remember everything? I started getting flashes of Sarah before he left. You'd already decided.” Erica felt the slip of tears on her cheeks. “Did you think he – we – couldn't have said goodbye knowing he would have to-” a choking sob quickened and shifted the trail running under her jaw and down her neck.

“Erica, I did not decide to bring Sarah into Therapy. And I would not have given you the option to take her on as a Patient, once she was.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So who did?”

The horse shifted under his hand, tossing its mane. “You. And Tom, I believe.”

“We can do that?” She'd taken it for granted that some things were out of her hands. That mysterious forces were in charge. But then, she took a lot of things for granted.

Arthur shook his head. “No. We can't. But there's something different about the two of you. Something special.”

“Because we're...” she hesitated, the word feeling wrong and yet right, too big for so few syllables and so terrifying in its implication it came out in whisper: “soul mates?”

“I believe so. We all have one. But two in Therapy at the same time, that bond taken out of step? We don't know what that means.”

“How do you even know this? Are you like, an angel? An alien? Is this some game you're making us play?”

He hesitated too long. “You could say I'm something of a referee, this time around. I don't know all the rules. But I know enough.”

Not feeling she knew nearly enough, Erica shuddered out a breath, took another and did the same all over again. “What do you want me to do?”

“Go back inside. Look into his eyes across lives and see.”

Heart pounding at the thought of meeting this stranger-who-wasn't-a-stranger she went back, to find him standing at a basin, shaving.

“Ah, Catherine. I wondered where you'd gone.”

“Oh just, you know,” she flailed a hand. “Fresh air.”

He was a little hazy, she could see now, as if he wouldn't look like Tom to any eyes but her own. Meeting his gaze in the mirror, only his eyes were in full focus.

“So, um, hi?” Inching closer, she bit her lip, hoping he wouldn't ask her anything she didn't know.

But he only laughed, wiping the remaining foam from his cheeks before spinning around to tug her into an embrace. “Remember the Festival the night we met? A crown of flowers in your hair?”

She didn't, of course, so she just smiled bashfully, before blinking up at him and then-

-she did.

The day they parted he'd asked her to look into her eyes and she'd seen – she'd felt – everything he was. This was like that, but... _more_. Too fast for details, images and feelings and moments from lifetimes, familiar faces but him, always him, like the beat of a drum, underneath garb and music and languages across the ages, past and maybe future, all jumbled and thrumming and and and. They were hugging, in his office, and flames were licking up but she wasn't scared and the smell of cocoa filled the air and she'd never felt less alone. She staggered backwards-

-into the hedge.

Twigs pricked her scalp as she looked up at Arthur and Naadiah. “Oh my god.”

~*

_Beyond the rightness or wrongness of things there is a field. I'll meet you there._

~*

Time started again, and she heard Sarah mumble something and go inside. But Tom remained, looking up at the stars.

Dusting herself off, Erica walked towards the gate, single minded in purpose because her head was too full to do more than carry it carefully on her neck.

“Erica.” Her name was a call of gentle surprise and pleasure, confusion and pain, hesitation and peace.

He stood still, arms loose at his sides, watching her approach until she was close enough to touch.

“Look into my eyes.”

And then they both knew. What they shouldn't know. They saw it all, felt it all, and with the waft of hot chocolate in the air their foreheads were resting together, hands resting on each others sides.

“We've never forgotten each other before.”

“We won't forget. Not what matters.”

Tom hesitated. "'It may be the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home.' - Rumi”

Erica had to laugh. “I don't even know how it would work. How can I be who I am, without having known you?”

“Or I you? But the universe has a way-”

“-of righting itself. And we've never played the game this way before.”

“One last thing we've never tried.”

This time when they held each other the story was poetry without words. A future – in this lifetime – without knowing each other. Without remembering. Without expecting. But they had their beat, and it had changed them. Woven with all the others. A part of them when they would go home to their cabin and have never been apart.

As Arthur and Naadiah watched, knowing they did not understand, Erica and Tom's hearts beat in time as they stepped back and the thing they never should have been able to know flew to the skies as they lifted their eyes.

Erica found herself in front of her Patient's father, as Tom found a stranger in his yard.

“Hello – are you here to see Sarah?”

~*

_When I die, I shall soar with Angels, and when I die to the angels, what I shall become you cannot imagine._

~*

The flames cast shadows over the restored soul enjoying the warmth. It would not divide again. It would never again leave the cabin to play with its neighbors. It was time to leave this outpost, and begin the journey home.

The others would follow. The others would join.

It would end. It would go home, and shut the door, and mote on a flake of a speck in a sigh had a name for what would happen next, too. It was a silly name, but then humour was one of its crowning discoveries. It was a fine name. Not a very pretty name but, you know.

The Big Crunch.

The dot on the chalkboard is wiped away.

And then it would begin anew.

~*

_You are not a drop in the ocean._  
_You are the entire ocean, in a drop._  
  


**Author's Note:**

> So sorry, I started writing and this is what came out. xoxo


End file.
